


Red lips are not so red.

by pindenial



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:48:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pindenial/pseuds/pindenial
Summary: "The shock of green comes out of nowhere. He just appears one day and Peter is thrown back years to a boat and a lock and a steady hand reverently covering George’s ashen face.“Name’s Alex,” he says and reaches for Peter’s hand like they have never met and Peter’s torn, so torn."Or, the one where Peter loses his mind and finds Alex. Not necessarily in that order.





	Red lips are not so red.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longest thing I've ever blasted out in less than 24 hours. Dunkirk is destroying my life, and Peter Dawson has my heart and soul. The porn was accidental.
> 
> As always, unbeta'd.

> Red lips are not so red  
>  As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.  
>  Kindness of wooed and wooer  
>  Seems shame to their love pure.  
>  O Love, your eyes lose lure  
>  When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
> 
> Wilfred Owen,  _Greater Love_

 

Peter doesn’t think of George everyday, not anymore. But most. 

Look, he doesn’t say, cannot jostle the boy as he ambles up the road as he might have when George was still there, there and breathing. George always brought out the child in him. They would hoot and yell as they careened along the pier, through the town. Call on girls and play football in the lanes. Before Peter’s brother went away and got himself killed. Before Dunkirk. 

Most days, they both rest with him still, and Peter is content to wear them like a shroud. Aches for them: paints them golden in his memory. Not as heroes but as the very best of men. 

They were boys, really. Peter grows up without them. He moves to London. Tells his father that it’s his duty to help the rebuild, and the old man understands the siren call of obligation too well to try and stop him.

Peter doesn’t say that it’s the only scrap of salvation he can hope for. That he can’t bear to see the weary, sunken eyes of George’s mother, day after day. Peter tells himself the blame that he sees in her averted gaze is all in his head. On the good days, he almost believes it. 

London is dirty and ragged, but nobody knows him and that’s enough. Although, scattered among its people, its children and women, are men who Peter thinks he recognises. Can see them, covered in oil and sweat and the dark stain of dried blood, not red but black. He sees how they tense when a streetlamp bursts or a car door slams. They shuffle on soon enough and Peter thinks it best not to stop them, to ask where and when. Though he longs for it.  _ France? Africa?  _

It shouldn’t come as a shock to realise that his new coworkers are very frequently the same brave men who fought hard enough to come home from the war, but it does. The thought always makes Peter feel incorrigibly sad. 

It is from these men that Peter learns how to plumb, learns what he can about electrical wiring and laying foundations and he rebuilds, one brick on top of the other. He grows tough from the work, hands grow calloused like the seafarers he used to chat to out by his father’s boat. 

It isn’t much but it alleviates the heaviness in his chest, a bit. Oddly enough, it’s the very same heaviness that pulls him away from the dive bars and dancehalls. Cannot bear to watch as his colleagues piss away their money. They’d do just about anything for an evening of blissful absence.

Instead Peter goes to the pictures, or sits in cafes and reads whatever he can- not the newspaper, never ever- and wonders what his brother would make of him, a solitary figure. The amateur philosopher, he might joke, finally getting his hands dirty.  

The shock of green comes out of nowhere. He just appears one day and Peter is thrown back years to a boat and a lock and a steady hand reverently covering George’s ashen face. 

“Name’s Alex,” he says and reaches for Peter’s hand like they have never met and Peter’s torn, so torn.

“Peter,” he says with a small smile, accepts his greeting. Alex is there to to help with the building programme, just like him and the rest. Tells Peter that he tried moving home but couldn’t bring himself to go down mines or into factories. 

“There’s something about this that feels less claustrophobic.” Alex almost fakes nonchalance but the shadow in his gaze gives him away. Peter respects him enough not to ask. 

Alex, it turns out, is quite a talker, which suits Peter just fine. They work and Alex tells jokes, tales of a youth in Manchester. He makes the other men laugh. Despite their immediate camaraderie, stories of seducing women are the only conquests mentioned, of battles won or lost. No oil, no boats, no bodies.

A dank and dark part of Peter wishes that it wasn’t the case.

When one contract ends, Alex always seems to appear at the next one and Peter doesn’t think much of it. 

“Why d’you never come to the pub?” Alex asks one day as they are finishing up work on a dockside warehouse. A sharp wind from the Thames whips around his blonde hair and from the corner of his eye, Peter sees him watching. Rather than his sleeve, Alex wears his heart in his eyes.

Peter carefully ties a strong knot in a rope that he and Alex are using to winch bricks up to the men in the scaffolding. Rubs sweaty hands on his trousers before straightening. Shrugs. 

“Never been a big fan of drinking,” Peter says evenly enough. In fact, it had been his first port of call after that wretched day at Dunkirk had burned itself into his memory. But drink made the ghost of George an ugly, malevolent thing and the voices in Peter’s head scared him sober. 

“I used to think that,” Alex smiles slightly and his eyes soften from the pointed green Peter is used to. “Where’d you serve?”

Peter tenses, his blood runs cold and he does not meet the gaze of the other man when he finally scratches out a “didn’t”. 

“Oh.” Alex pauses and every second Peter is reminded of the lock and the boat and George like a knife in his chest. “My mistake.”

“You?” Alex finds himself asking, breathlessly, and turns to finally take Alex in, who has grown sullen, eyes distant. 

“France. Then Turkey.” 

I know you, Peter wants to say, and you know George. I remember what you did. I care. 

Instead, he says nothing. 

Maybe it’s the look in his eyes, but Alex then says, “Come for a drink later. It’s Friday, after all.” 

It isn’t a request. Irregardless, Peter can’t say no. 

Instead of a pub by the wharf, Peter follows Alex through the misty drizzle to a cramped bar that Peter might not have seen at all had Alex not pushed open the worn wooden door. It smells of sweat and ale, and is surprisingly quiet for the time of day. 

The dark-haired bartender knows Alex well enough to start pouring his drink without needing direction. 

“Tommy, a second pint of bitter for my friend here, Peter.” The pale man glances at Peter for a moment and pauses. There is something familiar in his pinched gaze, yet Peter cannot place him. Though he’s willing to make a guess. Peter nods uncomfortably, takes a seat next to Alex at the bar. 

Much like at work, Alex talks and Peter listens with an occasional aside from Tommy whenever Alex grows too vulgar or loud. Despite the frown, Peter can see the softness around the bartender’s mouth that reveals a tired fondness. 

Peter chalks it up to a small lunch and the fact that Alex really does talk a lot, but he drinks more than he should. Drinks until the world swims before him and he waits for George, for his brother, to come surging from his chest. 

There is a brightness about Alex that makes him impossible not to focus on- his teeth, the way his eyes crease when he smiles, the warm, steadying hand on his arm- it all has Peter in a spin. When Alex slides off his barstool without the slightest wobble to go and relieve himself, Peter’s eyes follow him through the pub and down the stairs. 

“He does that to people.” The voice jolts Peter out of his reverie and he turns to look at Tommy who is watching him with interest. “Burrows his way into people’s lives like a tick. Until he’s so deep in you can’t pull him out.” 

Peter wants to tell him that he’s gotten it all wrong, that Peter barely knows Alex, but cannot seem to find the words. 

“You’re… from the boat.” Tommy continues and suddenly Peter is desperately, blindingly sober. He nods slowly. “Does Alex know?”

Peter’s tongue darts out to lick chapped lips. “No,” he responds at length. 

Tommy watches him with smart eyes and Peter feels the skin on the back of his neck rise. He fights off a shudder. 

“Good.” Tommy says, pours Peter a glass of water. “It’s better this way.” Quietly, he places the drink before the man and then moves off down the bar to serve another customer. 

When Alex returns, it is as if he can sense a change in the air, quirks his head at the glass of water that Peter hasn’t touched. “You’re so weak, man.” He jibes, lightly. “Tommy’s cut you off already.”

Peter cracks a smile. “Told you I wasn’t a drinker.” Alex examines him for a second before turning back to his pint. 

“You know him well?” Peter finds himself asking, jerking his head in Tommy’s direction when Alex shoots him a confused glance. 

Alex turns away from Peter to drink Tommy in for a moment and Peter sees the hidden grin, the stilling of Alex’s leg from its incessant tapping against the leg of the stool. 

Alex doesn’t need to say anything for Peter to know that for Alex, Tommy is home. 

“He’s my roommate,” the brunette finally gets out, turning back to Peter. “Known him since the war.”

“My brother served in the RAF,” Peter finds himself blurting out and Alex nods, sagely. There’s a finality in Peter’s statement that stops Alex from asking anything further. 

“It touched everyone, one way or ‘nother.” 

“Yeah,” Peter rasps, feels something in his chest shatter, and looks about the bar for wherever George is lurking. Needs him, desperately. He jumps when Alex reaches out a hand to graze Peter’s thigh. 

“You okay, mate?” Alex asks, and Peter flushes as the veteran watches him with candid concern. As if submerged in cold water, Peter thinks he might be drowning in green, not black. 

“Just need air,” Peter pushes off his stool, staggers. The world opens up to him as a darkened alleyway and he sucks in a rasping breath and wonders briefly, how and why people insist on living.  _ Lving _ when the earth and the sky and the memories squashed in between the two insist on pressing so,  _ so _ tightly on Peter’s chest. Peter, who never looked a German in the eye and pulled a trigger. Peter who knows nothing of what Tommy and Alex have seen. And yet, and  _ yet…  _

“Peter.” It’s Alex, of course. Tick, Tommy said. Yes, Peter thinks, follows Alex’s voice back to earth.

This time Peter reaches for him. One hand on a broad shoulder, grasping wool, the other touching neck, skin, face. Alex stills. 

“How do you do it?” Peter asks, can feel the rain flattening his hair to his head, blocking his vision, seeping through his jumper. Realises he’s left his coat in the pub and can’t find reason to care. 

Alex grabs him by the wrists but doesn’t move his hands away, calloused as they are. “Do what?”

“Put one foot in front of the other.” Alex smiles at that, though it’s tinged with something else. 

“I can teach you that.” Alex says, maneuvers Peter so he’s pressed up to Alex’s side and they’re stumbling down the alley and into the broad highstreet. “Left, then right, you see?”

The dome of St. Peter’s peeks out from between destroyed buildings, as if shy, and Peter thinks it has no right to play coy, beautiful in its intricate vastness.

“Where are we going?” Peter finally asks as the chill slips under his clothes. 

“My flat’s just up here,” Alex says and Peter is suddenly aware of how close he is to that smile, those lips, red against his pale face. He grips Alex harder and says nothing else. 

“You uh… want something to change into? You’re soaked.” Alex asks when they get indoors, pulling off his heavy work shoes and shimmying out of his coat. From the sofa where Alex dumps him, Peter watches in fascination. “Maybe a brew?”

Alex disappears into an adjoining room before Peter can respond. He looks about and can’t bring himself to feel… How is he supposed to feel? Nervous? Excited? 

What if he’s gotten Alex all wrong?

He’s definitely gotten Alex all wrong. Peter’s learned better to force his own perversions on others. 

“Here,” Alex says as he reappears, a set of folded striped pajamas in his hand. “They’re Tommy’s but I’m betting they’d fit you better than mine would.” 

Peter frowns, doesn’t move. “He’s not going to mind.” Alex insists. 

“Thanks,” says Peter weakly. 

“Hey,” Alex says finally, and suddenly he’s there, squatting before Peter, gaze curious but open, calm. “It’s called thinking too much. Happens to me, too. And Tom.”

“What?” Peter asks, disconcerted by Alex’s sudden closeness. 

Alex prods Peter’s head with a finger before the gesture turns into something else. A caress. Smoothes the long hair off Peter’s forehead. “The voices in your head- they’re just that - voices. They aren’t real.”

And Peter cannot help it when his breath hitches and Alex stills, pins him to the sofa with his gaze. Because he knows the voices, George’s voice, isn’t real but Alex has no right to banish him, not when he knew him so briefly. 

“I have a trick,” Alex continues after a beat, and Peter doesn’t miss the moment when the same eyes flicker to Peter’s mouth and eyelids drop to half-mast. Changes in a half-breath. “It always gets the voices in my head to shut up. For a bit.” 

Alex’s hand is on his knee, tentative. 

“Yeah?” Peter finally answers, throatily. His mouth is dry as if the blazing fire in his veins has dried up any moisture in his body. 

“Yeah,” Alex replies and he’s leaning, letting his lips graze Peter’s in a featherlight touch. 

Peter thinks of what Tommy said to him and puts an unsteady hand on Alex’s chest. Lets out a shuddering breath. “What about Tommy?” 

Alex frowns, “He’s staying at his sister’s tonight. Told me to look after you.”

“But why?” Why would he say that unless they aren’t, Tommy and Alex aren’t…. 

“Cuz he knows you need this too.” And there’s something so honest in Alex’s gaze that Peter is pulling Alex to him before he can think twice. Kissing him because Alex is right, he needs Alex right now. That tenuous link to George and his brother and a time when Peter didn’t feel fucking half-mad. With lust and shame and regret.

Tommy is paying back a debt he owed, he supposes. Alex too. Though they never owed Peter a thing. 

The sofa beneath them groans as Alex climbs into Peter’s lap, knees barring any escape that Peter might think of making. Though he never could, he thinks, not with the searing kisses that Alex is offering so readily.

A hand finds his damp hair and Alex pulls, causes Peter to gasp and Alex slips his tongue into Peter’s mouth, moans quietly. 

“God, Alex.” Peter whines and Alex’s hands are everywhere, tugging Peter’s clothes off him as best he can. 

“Don’t bring him into this.” Alex laughs as he sheds Peter of his thick cable knit cardigan, makes quick work of his shirt beneath. 

Peter’s skin is on fire, prickling as Alex’s hands graze up his arms, over bare shoulders. Drags his thumb over Peter’s adam's apple as he cups the man’s jaw, kisses him again. 

“You’re freezing,” Alex frowns, gets to his feet and Peter almost whines at the loss of proximity. Alex drags him to his feet and brings their bodies together. Let’s his hands settle around Peter’s waist.  

The hard press against Peter’s hip is unmistakable. “Let’s go to bed,” Alex murmurs, “ ‘s warmer there.” 

It is warmer under the blankets. Peter shimmies out of his trousers and undergarments and waits, body tight. His dick is half hard and it takes all of him not to press a hand to it. Before him, Alex makes little show of shedding his own clothes, movements efficient. He seems calm- it’s almost annoying. He’s watching Peter with hungry eyes as he steps out of his pants and slides into bed next to him.  

Beside Peter, the other small bed in the room lies untouched, a loud reminder of Tommy’s absence. 

“Hey,” Alex says and Peter jumps when Alex’s hand grazes his bare side, the larger man shuffling so his head is bowed over Peter’s. “No more thinking, okay?”

Peter nods, pulls Alex down by the back of his neck, kisses him sweetly. 

Things move quickly after that. There is a safeness to Alex’s heavy body pressing him into the mattress. Peter’s knees fall open and welcomes him readily as his eyes fall closed. Moans loudly as Alex brings their erections together. 

When Peter’s eyes open, Alex is watching him with hunger. “Look at you, Peter.” He groans as his head drops, brown curls falling into eyes, pupils blown wide. 

Peter’s follows his gaze and gasps. Between their bodies, Alex is thicker than him, tip already shiny from precome and Peter needs to touch, to feel. They slide together like Alex was meant to be there, rolling his hips with exquisite precision. 

Peter thinks the cacophony of sensations might be too much for him, but the voices in his head are, as promised, entirely silent. Blood pounds in his ears instead as Alex’s quiet moans rattle around his empty mind. 

Reaching between them, Peter takes them both in hand and Alex fucks into the feeling with a primal need. It is too much and yet, never going to be enough. 

“Wait,” Peter says, his climax quickly approaching. “Wanna suck you.” 

Alex jolts back, eyes wide in the semi-darkness, and Peter panics. 

“Christ,” is all Alex says before he falls to the side next to Peter, hands petting the blonde hair like he would his favourite pet. “Peter, please.”

And suddenly Peter feels very sexy indeed, crawls between a pair of legs that open for him with ease. Takes Alex into his mouth. 

It is a strange feeling, the heaviness on his tongue, the sharp, masculine scent all over his mouth, in his nose. Peter can’t help but watch Alex’s reaction closely. His chest his heaving, mouth wet and swollen. A rough hand pushes the hair from Peter’s face once again and the movement seems fragile. 

“So pretty on my cock.” Alex says and Peter moans, sucks him as hard as he can. 

The strain in Alex’s face sends thrills down Peter’s spine and, pulling off with a pop, Peter says hoarsely, “You can… move, if you’d like.” 

Peter doesn’t know when he knew that his interests lay… elsewhere, thinks he might have always known but how can anyone be sure? How can you know that you’re going to want some other fellow’s bits near you, on you,  _ in you _ ?

“Peter Dawson,” Alex says, voice warm with fondness and desire. “Are you asking me to fuck your mouth?”

Peter can feel himself blushing as Alex waits for his reply, cock bouncing just out of reach. Peter takes him in hand, Alex’s gaze burning holes in him as he let’s his lips brush the raspberry head of Alex’s dick. Nods slightly, shy. It’s the tip of his tongue that turns out to be Alex’s downfall. 

“Fuck,” A loud thunk from above him and Alex’s head has hit the cracked plaster behind him. When Peter looks at him finally, there’s almost no green in Alex’s eyes, pupils blown wide. He looks ravenous. 

And suddenly he’s laughing, looking at Peter like Peter hung the moon. Fingers entwine themselves in blonde hair again and Peter smiles, opens his mouth and watches as Alex’s face as he slides in as far as he can and starts to move, Alex’s spindly fingers pressing hard on his face.

It hurts, his throat raw but almost no time has passed when Alex lets out a high keen, hips stuttering and Peter knows it’s coming. Alex releases his death grip on Peter but Peter stays put, wants to feel the man come undone inside did. 

Alex releases into Peter’s mouth in thick ribbons and Peter imagines it on his face, in his hair and his dick twitches painfully. 

As Alex softens in his mouth, Peter pulls back and starts pulling furiously at his own cock, taking in the damp brown curls and the almost childlike softness of Alex’s expression. Wants to commit it to memory like the smell of the oil and sweat of that day. 

Alex beckons him to him and Peter shuffles over on his knees. He’s not going to last. Alex takes him hand and reaches back to massage the skin between his balls and arse. Feels himself gasp, Peter has to rest a steadying hand on Alex’s shoulder as he moves, the sensation overwhelming. 

“Good lad,” Alex says, voice heavy with sated lust. And that’s all it takes for Peter to double over, press his face into the warm neck of Alex and come with shuddering, earth-shattering jerks. 

Alex is there to hold him when Peter slumps, bonelessly, onto the man beneath, a firm and steadying hand in his hair, the other round his neat waist. 

“That was…” Peter tries to find the words. Fails. Sighs. Feels Alex’s deep laugh reverberating in his own chest. 

“Tired?” Alex asks, already easing Peter into a prone position and grabbing the blankets that they had kicked off. He tucks his long torso against Peter’s back and the blonde man can’t think of a time he’s felt so at peace. 

“Yeah,” Peter says eventually before turning over to press a final kiss to the underside of Alex’s jaw. “Thanks.”

Alex smile presses to Peter’s forehead, but Peter’s already long asleep when Alex responds, a quiet murmured, “you’re welcome.”

When Tommy arrives home the next morning, Peter is sitting in the window of their pokey livingroom. There’s a line to his shoulders that’s different than it was the night before. The bright blonde hair shimmers in the morning light and Peter’s open gaze turns to look at Tommy. 

Tommy gives him a small nod and there’s a smile beginning to form on pale lips. Alex emerges from the kitchen with toast and a wet kiss on Tommy’s cheek. 

“Morning, love.” He says easily, hands the toast off to Peter who seems uncertain. 

“How are you today, Peter?” Tommy asks, question pointed but his meaning clear.  _ I’m glad he could help you. He helped me too.  _

Peter pauses. Takes stock, a smile forming on his lips. 

_ One foot in front of the other. Left, then right.  _

“Better,” he says. 

He means it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Might write a follow-up Tommy/Peter/Alex fic because they cute and deserve some sort of happiness.


End file.
